Tending The `Seeds Of Peace'

Boca Organizer Emphasizes Need For Youth To Understand King's Legacy

Boca Raton — As a boy growing up in New York City, Michael Chambers said his parents largely shielded him from the kind of racism enveloping much of the country in the 1950s.

But Sunday, at a celebration to honor the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Chambers reflected on several key events that shade his memories of that tumultuous period.

The first came in 1955, when Chambers heard the horrific story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy who was beaten and shot to death on a trip to visit family in rural Mississippi. The murder of Till, who was black, and the subsequent acquittals of his two white attackers, garnered national attention and helped to spark the modern Civil Rights movement. The story particularly resonated for Chambers, who was about Till's age at the time.

His second experience came on a car trip down the East Coast with his family. Chambers remembers being so mad at his father when he would not pull over for a bathroom break on a stretch of highway in North Carolina. It wasn't until years later, Chambers said, that he came to understand his father's decision.

The third event came in April 1968 when Chambers, serving a tour of duty in Vietnam, heard whispers that the King had been shot and killed while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn. Barely in his 20s, Chambers remembers worrying about the future of his country.

"I was so concerned that the violence I was seeing [in Vietnam] and [on television] back home was going to grow and grow," Chambers said. "But because of the seeds of peace Dr. King and others planted then, we were able to maintain."

So, it is with particular care that Chambers shares King's message with today's youth. A former director of multicultural affairs for Florida Atlantic University, Chambers is chairman of the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation of Boca Raton, which helped coordinate the eighth annual day of celebration on the anniversary of King's birth.

"Young people must have a connection with Dr. King and what he stood for," Chambers said. "Dr. King talked about having been to the mountaintop and seen the other side. So many of these kids today are struggling to get there."

The event, with speakers and performances from local high school marching bands, began with a march from Hughes Park near Federal Highway and Glades Road to the Mizner Park amphitheater. The march was led by the Boca Raton High School band and included about 75 members of the Martin Luther King Foundation, representatives from the city of Boca Raton and Florida Atlantic University, and others.

Like celebrations across the country Sunday, the event in Boca Raton was a multicultural and multigenerational affair.

"The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is not that he had a dream, but that he inspired all of us to dream," Rabbi Stephen Wise told the crowd of about 300 at the park's amphitheater.

Later, Wise spoke in private about how King is remembered in the Jewish community.

"The Jews rallied to his cause because he spoke about universal ideals," said Wise, a Rabbi at the Temple Beth El in Boca Raton.

Chambers said he hopes King's message of solidarity and peace is not lost on the students served by his foundation's scholarships and after-school programs.

Avery Gary, a sophomore drum major in the Pahokee High School band that performed Sunday, said it wasn't. But she lamented that more contemporary leaders haven't taken up King's cause.

"To learn to love without color, without race," Gary said. "That's his message."